I've been a fan of 'the Prisoner' for much of my life, and am a sucessful columnist on the subject.

Friday, 21 January 2011

THEPRISONER

I've been watching THEPRISONER again............and it seems to me that with this reinterpretation, Six is not the problem like his predecessor No.6, but the solution! And that 'Talk Threapy' is just a lot of mumbo-jumbo. Certainly Two doesn't believe in it. It's just important for Six to believe. What is it Two said "A man with nothing to hide, has nothing to find."
I like the scene in the desert where Six is tied to a stake.......Two is taunting him with a canteen of water.....then he puts a hand grenade in Six's mouth, pulls the safety pin, and calmly steps back........the grenade explodes and Six wakes up. So it's true, you can't die in a dream.....or can you? Because the village is all in the unconcious mind of Two's wife M2, and everyone in the village is there through mental manipulation, as though in a dream. After all, 93 died a village death, as did 455, 823, 415 909, 11-12, and M2..........................So it is possible to die in a dream after all!
It was interesting for me to note a comparison between Six and No.6. No.6 created an abstract sculpture for the Exhibition of Arts and Crafts in the episode The Chimes of Big Ben, and called it 'Escape.' That's because for No.6 his sculpture respresented escape. And why not, because when all the pieces of the sculpture were put together in another way, it formed a boat, which No.6 and No.8 used to escape the village. In the desert Six saw a ships drift anchor in the desert. 16 described the anchor as a 'desert folly,' a nothing. But to Six the anchor represented escape. Because where there's an anchor there's a ship. And where there's a ship there's a sea, and that means escape!
There was a ships anchor, but sadly no ship. There was a sea, which later turned out to be simply more desert! Because sadly, like all things in the village, the sea was simply all in the mind. A mixture of an echo of a distant memory, and the wish for escape!

However originally, there was going to be a full sized ship built and attached to that anchor out there in the desert, and here is an set designers impression of such a ship.

The pointing finger of the set designer points to the ships anchor. However it soon became apparent that to build a full-sized ship in the desert was completely impractical. And so they settled for the ships drift anchor, which was made out of three quater inch plywood, as pictured below.

However, for both Six and his predecessor, there is no such escape. After all there's no escape, because there's nowhere to escape to!

About Me

An enthusiast of the 1960's television series 'the Prisoner.' A writer, author, and considered an authority on the series.
'The Prisoner' captivated me from the moment of that clash of thunder in the opening sequence, and I have been a prisoner of 'the Prisoner' ever since.